Teju Cole’s book “Every Day Is for the Thief” was unavailable in the West until recently, though it printed in Nigeria in 2007. Mr. Cole spent most of his life in his parents’ native country, though he returned to the U.S., where he was born, and currently resides in New York.

“Every Day Is for the Thief,” which documents the narrator’s estrangement during a return visit to Lagos, also includes photographs Mr. Cole shot of everyday life there.

“I’m often asked about how a photograph can be part of a work of fiction. For me, the fiction happens in the placement, in the way a photograph taken under one set of conditions is made to suggest another. A photo becomes fictional on the basis of the text beside it, or the photos that precede or follow it,” Mr. Cole said. “My photos for ‘Every Day Is for the Thief’ narrate an imagined Lagos, much like the text in which they are interspersed.”